Blackberry maker RIM offers data tapping at its premises in India

NEW DELHI: Blackberry maker Research in Motion, which had been slapped with a January 31 deadline to provide a 'final solution' for lawful interception of services offered on its handsets , has offered to install a network data analysis system at its premises in India, to end the three-year standoff between the Canadian company and security agencies here.

The home ministry has suggested that the Canadian company set up this NDAS infrastructure that has the capabilities to automatically decode all data flowing on RIM's network, and also ensure that intercepted and decoded information will not travel outside the country, at the premises of mobile phone companies.

In an internal note reviewed by ET, the home ministry said its opposition towards RIM setting up the network data analysis system at its own premises here stemmed from a security perspective.

Earlier this month, RIM had offered a cloud-based solution to India's home ministry , but the latter then sought changes after it was found that intercepted and decoded data was flowing via the internet from the Canadian company's servers in Europe to that of mobile networks here.

"In the final solution proposed by RIM, the decoding will be automatic. Intercepted and decoded data will not travel out of India . RIM has proposed to install NDAS in India. In the final solution, intercepted and decoded data will travel between service providers and RIM India ," adds the home ministry note issued by its deputy director Arvind Kumar.

This marks a significant climbdown for the Canadian company, which had previously resisted pressure from India's home ministry , to install servers here, while also maintaining that it did not have any master key to intercept any BlackBerry communication.

The stakes are big for the Canadian smartphone maker, especially since India is one of its fastest growing markets. Super secure corporate email has been RIM's unique selling point, which has made the BlackBerry service an instant hit with high-flier executives. Today, India has over a million BlackBerry users although less than 4 lakh subscribe to its email and messenger service.

In October, the government ordered RIM to come up with a solution by January 2011-end that would give the country's intelligence agencies complete access to all services offered on its handsets .

It had earlier asked RIM to hand over the encryption keys and codes of its corporate mail and messaging services to the Indian security establishment by October 31. The extension to January-end 2011 was given since RIM had sought a timeframe of 23 weeks in August to provide a solution for lawful access 'that would not involve overseas data path' .